Authors: Barnaby C Reeves, Jonathan J Deeks, Julian PT Higgins and George A Wells on behalf of the Cochrane Non-Randomised Studies Methods Group.
This chapter should be cited as: Reeves BC, Deeks JJ, Higgins JPT, Wells GA. Chapter 13: Including non-randomized studies. In: Higgins JPT, Green S (editors), Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions Version 5.1.0 (updated March 2011). The Cochrane Collaboration, 2011. Available from www.handbook.cochrane.org.
Acknowledgements: We gratefully acknowledge Ole Olsen, Peter Gøtzsche, Angela Harden, Mustafa Soomro, Guido Schwarzer and Bev Shea for their early drafts of different sections. We also thank Laurent Audigé, Duncan Saunders, Alex Sutton, Helen Thomas and Gro Jamtved for comments on previous drafts.